“It’s hard not to romanticize
baseball”
-
Billy Beane, Moneyball
The New Yorker is the gold standard
for magazine writing. While it’s not immune from criticism—a liberal, East
Coast publication that’s either deeply entrenched in or overly withdrawn from
celebrity culture, depending of course on who you ask—each week, the magazine presents
a carefully selected menu of articles, writing that is a potent combination of
well-respected and well-read. It’s intellectually engaged and still easily
digested. It’s where most writers want to write. But the New Yorker is not without its detractors, at least amongst the literary community; less due to its
content but because of its style. While the magazine is well-rounded, covering
all facets of esoterica in rapturous detail, its reportage is only to be
presented sui generis, in the clear,
clean prose that it has made famous. Its “house style” is a beacon for
readers, as its masthead guarantees that each piece will be full of straightforward
and crisp prose. At the very least, a New
Yorker article is always well-written. But for writers, the New Yorker limits the pallet: paint
anything at all on any canvas you’d like, but you can only use the primary
colors. Writing that appears in the New
Yorker is, by definition, conspicuously inconspicuous. As such, the writer
must have the technique and skill not to call attention to his technique and
skill. While this is a demonstration of aptitude, it’s also quite the handcuff,
as it stops writers from taking the risks they might indulge when working under
a different imprint. Writers who are more experimental, or stylistic – they
might describe themselves as writers who not only love to write, but the actual
art of writing – are forced to either suffocate their impulses or to find a
different periodical. This isn’t to say that the New Yorker doesn’t allow for good writing: it’s filled with great
writing, often the finest in contemporary literature. However, it’s exclusively
a certain kind of writing: plainly and always good but always very plainly.
It
is perhaps no surprise then, to think that Hollywood suffers from the same
problem. The premiere directors in the film game have stellar technical
abilities, honed through years of training and genepools of talent. But there’s
a code – spoken or unspoken – amongst filmmakers, that at the peak of the
filmmaking spectrum, where commerce meets criticism, directors are not supposed
to indulge all of their artistic desires. This style can’t be wed to any
particular party: it might be studio executives expecting that films are shot a
certain way; an American school of plainspoken filmmaking that most directors
subscribe to; or that the aggregate product of each director’s process leads to
straightforward and plainly presented films. But ultimately, Hollywood films
are presented in a manner akin to the New
Yorker’s prose. Shots are not to be angled or lingered, music is not to be
featured, dialogue and actions are always highlighted, and artistry and
technique are never shown off. Now, Hollywood allows itself one luxury in this
respect: it showcases filmmaking technique that is only made possible by the
largesse of budget—see Messrs. Cameron, Bay, Nolan. This is the same sort of
prize the New Yorker allots itself
when writers produce a twenty-five page article, the privilege of being privileged,
this being the kind of thing that we let ourselves do because we are the only
people who can do this. However, the overall message of both Hollywood and The New Yorker transcends mediums: at
the highest levels of mainstream storytelling, the story is told in the
plainest manner.
Thus,
Drive is an intriguing film because
it refuses to follow these rules. Quite overtly, the film implicitly reminds
the viewer that it is a film, and because of its self-conscious stylization, a
very good one. Its story is as plain as possible: The Driver (Ryan Gosling) is
a Hollywood stunt driver by day and getaway driver by night. He becomes
involved with two residents in his apartment building, a woman and her young
son, until it is revealed to both The Driver and the viewer that she is not
unattached: her newly-reformed husband has just been released from prison. Apparently,
the husband still has some debts to pay to some sadistic individuals, and The
Driver offers to help out. Histrionics ensue.
Drive is not your typical Hollywood
film, and perhaps it should not be classified that way. It’s based on a short
novel by James Sallis I have not read, and the book has described as an
existentialist noir. This style would presumably play out in prose that is
epigrammatic, bleak, and stark, and the movie works hard to create that exact
vibe. The Driver, the film’s main character – though I’d argue that the main
character is that it is a film itself – is never named, and he speaks
approximately twenty lines of dialogue throughout the movie. Gosling intends to
capture his character with the brooding and blank contortions that his facial
muscles have mastered, as these expressions are evidently supposed to be
signals of deep thinking. The effect of this however, is a resounding blankness,
which actually works to great effect: the plainness of Gosling’s faces
underscores the plainness of The Driver’s moral code, which doubles as the
film’s underlying message, that there is a price that must be paid for doing bad
things with good intentions to bad people.
While Drive has been promoted as a
blockbuster film, this is probably due to its cast: Gosling, Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston, Sons of Anarchy’s Ron Pearlman, the
multi-talented Albert Brooks, a veritable who’s who of ad-free cable television.
But the film’s tone is more characteristic of independent films, or even
European art cinema. The film’s director, Nicholas Winding Refn, is a native
Dane, and his previous films have mostly featured other European company.
He uses the film as a tour de force demonstating his own directorial ability, presenting
a series of well-formed pastiches: one section is reminiscent of an 80s car
movie that would probably involve James Spader; another of a graphic and violent
B-film whose gore is the main attraction. Winding Refn manages to avoid
sacrificing the story with this approach, but perhaps that’s because there
isn’t much of a story to tell; after the thrilling standalone vignette that
prefaces the opening credits, Drive
seems almost a vehicle for Winding Refn to play camera games, using story as
the slatting for his directorial panache, as opposed to what’s usually the
other way around.
I have failed to mention Quentin Tarantino up to this point, and he is the
antidote to my earlier theory, that suggests that all Hollywood filmmakers are
expected to direct their films in the plainest manner possible. Tarantino’s
style – and his usage of violence as a panacea – is the underlying character of
his work, the New York of his Sex and The
City, the unending internal guilt of his Sopranos. Likewise, Winding Refn borrows a page from Tarantino’s
book, as violence is not just the reason moviegoers have rushed to see Drive, but the reason that Drive should be seen—and not read,
heard, or Wiki-ed. As is the case with Tarantino’s films, the violence is both
graphic and comic, trenchant and animated. It serves as a storytelling
technique, by telling us something about the kind of characters the Driver and
his nemeses are, but also as a showcase, as the violence itself littered with
the sort of creative allusions that stuntmen, choreographers and makeup artists
fantasize about. Unfortunately, as the kniving continually takes precedence
over the narrative, the gore gradually loses its shocking punch, instead
growing increasingly satirical. The characters in Drive are barely fleshed out: one can only make the generalization
that these are amoral men willing to go to extreme lengths to get what they
want. And so, the violence appears not as natural outgrowth of their characters
but the reason for their utter existence – they are alive only for the sake of
killing people.
It is strange then, that Drive has
gotten such strong reviews, from both audiences and critics. Part of this is
due to strong and subdued acting performances from the movie’s stars, their
characters are very different than any we’ve seen the four actors previously
inhabit. But additionally, the film has a strange relationship with its
masculine audience (presumably, the girls who like this movie are mostly there
to see The Gosling). Drive appears to
be the rare movie that was made for men without demeaning them. Typically
resigned to being treated as highly conditioned mammals waiting for the next in
a line of highly predictable and very expensive explosions, this movie gives
men—and the movie is almost exclusively populated and driven by its male
characters—the same artfulness that women receive from period romances: a
color, a sophistication, a style. Now, there is another well-known director who
makes real movies for real men: the aforementioned Quentin Tarantino. However,
Tarantino perhaps the premiere auteur in the man-movie genre, is exclusively a
writer-director (as are the Coens and Nolan, two other filmmakers I might hose
into the “masculine” subset); as such, his films are tightly crafted to work
within the guidelines of his style. His entire vision imbues itself from genesis
to post-production—everything he makes is always entirely a Tarantino film in
every way. While Drive, on account of
its sparse story, has a degree of artistic consistency, the audience can’t help
but feel that along the way, the message has been a bit muddled. As this is a
film that is for by and about men, one is struck by the sexism so obvious in
the film’s subtext: that men simply don’t know how to talk about their
problems.
Moneyball, the recent film about the
2002 Oakland Athletics, takes the entirely opposite approach. It’s another film
by and about men (as most films are!) but men are only half of its intended
audience. It’s a film that operates in the new zone of high-profile filmmaking:
a star-laden, well-credentialed, tightly written, Oscar contender, but without
any special effects or superheroes, it’s still worried about making back its
budget. Call it an apartment-complex buster. Moneyball is a strange film, although not for the reasons that critics
might have you believe. They have appraised the film as unique because of its
subject matter, suggesting that the film treats the sabermetric approach –
identifying great baseball players based on data as opposed to impeccable deltoids – as its leading
character. This isn’t really true. These critics have paid too much
attention to Moneyball, Michael
Lewis’ excellent 2003 book (and the basis for the film), which goes into full
narrative detail about the origins and usage of
sabermetrics.
Moneyball the movie, however, has
sabermetrics as its theme, but not as its star. The film is actually a
character piece, focusing on the life and struggles of Billy Beane, the
Athletics’ iconoclast general manager. This is largely to Lewis’ credit: having
re-read Moneyball, I see that his
ability to oscillate between detailing the sabermetric approach, the ongoing
narrative of the Athletics season and their players, and Beane’s own personal
history is truly brilliant (it’s actually incredible how many of the key lines
of dialogue are stolen from Lewis’ prose). While the film’s production
struggles have been well-documented, after watching it, it’s quite clear that
this was a movie waiting to happen.
Moneyball is a classic underdog
story, and the sabermetric conceit that all the critics have focused on is a
bit ridiculous – that underdogs need to find a unique way to beat the bigger
and stronger favorite is a truth literally as old as David and Goliath. The
film remains strange, however, because of how sparsely it operates. While Drive eschews dialogue for the luxuries
of moviemaking—tons of killing, lots of colors, and supercutting—Moneyball is mostly people sitting
around talking about baseball. This is partly due to the constraints of its
subject matter but the film is shot in a very particular manner: Beane jiggles from
conference call to conference call as he tries to land unheralded relief
pitcher Ricardo Rincon, who eventually becomes a journeyman pitcher for the
Oakland A’s, and they lose a future all-star in the process. Moneyball treats this trade as the
highpoint of a great drama.
In a sense, this is a sports movie for people who don’t like sports
movies. Moneyball doesn’t
bother with most of the typical sports movie clichés - training sequences, pep
talks, forced moments of team bonding – and instead focuses on Beane, as a
manager, failed player, visionary – a man. This is largely due to its tightly-crafted
script, written by Academy Award winners Steven Zaillan and Aaron Sorkin. Bennett
Miller, the film’s director, smartly defers to the screenplay, letting the
dialogue and character portrayals speak for themselves. (Credit especially goes
to Sorkin: this is the first time he’s had to write characters whose main trait
is not being insanely articulate, and he did a fantastic job. He is truly the
best in the business.) And while the film ending was forced by the
constraints of real-life (spoiler: the 2002 Oakland Athletics didn’t win the
World Series) the movie deals with it admirably, closing the film by focusing
on the character of Beane, and subtly meditating on the meaning of success.
What’s interesting about both of these films, apropos their entirely disparate
contents and approach, is how seriously they take themselves. Like a writer
with a Pulitzer, both Drive and Moneyball are determined to be movies
that are excellent and different than the rest in their genre. They constantly
remind the viewer of their pedigree, which is very strange, given that they are
each ostensibly genre films that should be predominantly aimed at male
audiences. In some ways, this is refreshing: it’s nice to see that some
producers are committed to treating a commercial film like a piece of art;
nuanced, sparse, unique. But in other respects, it’s very strange: although the
films are well-made, they each ultimately rely on the hoaky clichés of their
genre, so why aren’t they willing to admit that?
In
the midst of thinking about these films, while shuffling through Bruce
Springsteen’s latest album Wrecking Ball,
I found myself listening to his old classic “Thunder Road”. Springsteen is an American
icon and one of my favorite musicians, although he’s often incredibly clichéd,
singing the same tired blue-collar songs about the same tired blue-collar
stories. This would be a reason to avoid Springsteen, except for the fact that
this is why I love Springsteen: I come for the cliché. Springsteen is a
brilliant musician because while he doesn’t avoid clichés – and clichés are
important, which is why they’re cliché – he doesn’t abuse them either: his
songs are more universal than everyone else’s and they’re still well-written,
creative, and musical. They’re pieces of art. Working within a well-tread
trope doesn’t strangle creativity; singing songs about the Great American Dream
doesn’t mean that they can’t be extremely well-written. Effectively, this is
the opposite of The New Yorker
problem. The New Yorker’s writers are
so excellent because they don't let the house style stultify them. They write
excellent pieces - that happen to follow the imposed rules. Drive and Moneyball are not movies filled with perfect choices—sometimes their
focus on style interfered with their actual substance. But it's refreshing to
see that directors are willing to make commercial, genre films with the same
daring and voice that they apply to their pet projects, especially when these
films are intended for an audience that is usually underestimated and
condescended to—adult men with typical taste. As Billy Beane says so aptly, in
a movie that's about trying to avoid doing so, "it's hard not to
romanticize baseball". It's usually worth it.
Drive - a different
kind of action movie. Not sure every facet worked, and the lack of character
development was a bit frustrating, but you'll be glad you went. 79.
Moneyball - a
dialogue heavy story that is at times inspiring, and at times very slow. Not
sure you'd like it if you weren't a baseball fan, though the writing is sharp,
and Brad Pitt gives one of the best performances of his career. 83.
